The world's leading natural and organic
foods supermarket and creator of the Animal Compassion Foundation
(www.animalcompassionfoundation.org ), announced today that it has set
a deadline of June 15, 2006 to assess and significantly upgrade the
supply chain process to procure and sell live lobsters in a more
humane way. If more compassionate standards are not implemented by
that date, Whole Foods Market will discontinue the sale of live
lobsters.

"Our commitment to animal compassionate standards means eliminating
unnecessary and avoidable suffering when it is possible for us to do
so," said John Mackey, co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market.
"Given all the work we have done regarding animal welfare in our
natural meat and animal compassionate standards, we decided the sale
of live lobsters within our stores and also their procurement
conditions were appropriate to question."